The Letter & The Coin
by seriousish
Summary: "Myka. See to it this is read to my students. Assuming I shan't be able to deliver the message myself." Myka/HG


The Letter

It was days before Myka checked her pocket. She got back to the B&B and the collapse came like an animal lying in wait. Her clothes discarded on the floor, the bed seeming to smell of Helena even after all the months without her… she slept fitfully for hours, and when the call came in of a ping in Houston, she woke gratefully. The next day, she was back, with an Artifact that would stay in its bag for the foreseeable future. Then she picked up her jacket and saw a letter tumble out of the pocket.

Helena's neat-but-florid handwriting told the tale. It marked the envelope in three bold columns.

**Myka. See to it this is read to my students. Assuming I shan't be able to deliver the message myself.**

Myka's hands shook as she ripped open the envelope, ruining Helena's fine calligraphy. There had to be something more. Helena wouldn't have passed this to her if there weren't…

What was the last thing she'd said to Helena? Something about the Marie Celeste? A congratulations? She couldn't even remember, it was all a blur.

It hadn't been 'I love you.'

The letter unfolded, the words stretched out in ink the black of H.G.'s hair.

**My dear students,**

Even I don't possess the words to express my sorrow at leaving you. It's been a privilege to educate and befriend you, one and all. Only the gravest of emergencies could tear me away from your company. Namely, a woman.

Someone I greatly care for, someone I thought was lost to me, has returned to my life. I have tried, more than simply Literature, to teach you Literature's lessons. In looking for a companion in your life, someone to share your fortune and sorrow with, I've endeavored to teach the qualities one should favor. Elizabeth Bennet's humor. Darcy's adaptability. Jane's independence. Isabella's ambition. Catherine's bookishness. Emma's helpfulness. It is exceedingly rare to meet someone with all these attributes. This woman I've come to love possesses them all in abundance, and more besides.

Such a woman you hold onto. You do not act so foolishly as to lose them. But if you do, the wonderful thing is that they're noble enough to give you a second chance. Mine has been long in coming, but I have no intention of wasting it. Near or far, I intend to stay with her until the end.

May you take your own chances,  
>Emily Lake<p>

Myka read it five times before a tear landed on it, smearing the ink. That forced her to put it away. She couldn't bear any damage to her last scrap of Helena. She didn't even have a body to bury, but her words… the last story of H.G. Wells had been a romance.

* * *

><p>Artie spent days at a time on the pocket watch, tinkering and winding, like a man trying to get a stubborn dog to do a trick. Usually Claudia would snap him out of those kinds of funks, but she was puzzling over the metronome before she turned it on, trying to come up with a cheat for the consequences they all knew would come.<p>

Of the walking wounded, Myka and Pete didn't have the heart to bring them back and Leena didn't have the authority. Myka could see it happening, she just couldn't bring herself to care. Helena was gone, died one of the hundred ways she could've died—split in a Regent prison or sacrificed to stop Sykes. The fact that it had been to save Myka, looking into her eyes, made no difference. It just made the hurt that much fresher.

And Artie kept working at the pocket watch.

"Helena," Myka said, like it was a key she could try in his lock.

"What about her?" Artie replied, the only thing keeping it from being a growl the lack of volume.

"Could she have come back? If she'd been inside the forcefield with us, would you have shaken her hand and thanked her for saving us and taken back her memories or frozen her in bronze or whatever else you people have left to do to her?"

The screwdriver he was fiddling at the watch with turned and turned and turned. "I couldn't. After seeing the way you look at her and she looks at you… I just could not."

The Coin

Myka sat at her desk for ten minutes before she gathered the paper. It took three tries for Myka to steady her hand to the point where she could write. She clicked her pen in and out and set it to the paper and made a little mark. Then it all poured out.

_He would've let us be together. We could've been together._

She crossed the words out. Then she wadded the paper up and got another. The white expanse mocked her.

_Myka,_

This is important. The coin is an Artifact. Do not pick it up without gloves.

Don't mention it to the others, I'll tell you. It removes memories. Ones you thought you were strong enough to live with, but you weren't. This is the only way you'll stop picturing a future you can't have. I'm sorry I got you into this. I'm sorry I made these choices. But I'm not sorry about who I… what happened. I just can't keep them inside any longer.

She set the pen aside, trusting herself—the new her, the Myka who wouldn't feel this way—to recognize her own handwriting. And she picked up the Janus Coin.

"I first met H.G. Wells in Britain. She wanted to kiss me then. She's always wanted to kiss me."

She kept talking. The memories yawned open, seeming to register with her even as they left.

"After she was reinstated at the Warehouse, I took her to the bed and breakfast. I showed her around. She came into my room that night. We made love. I was waiting for her…"

She was making a terrible mistake. That memory was gone, stinging her with its absence like she was poking her tongue at a lost tooth. Still, she kept going. She had to keep going.

"I kept calling up her hologram when I didn't have to. I liked talking to her. I liked making her smile. Once, I smuggled her into a movie theater and we watched a show together. I would've given anything… I would give anything to hold her hand."

They went easily now, the memories. Helena was a stranger, and all that was left were odds and ends, detritus that needed to be cleaned out. It was like throwing out an old book. Things that had happened to someone else, with no application to her.

"She used it to shield us. She didn't even think of using it on the bomb, just me. She wanted to save me. And I looked at her. I looked at her and she…"

Why would someone look at her like that? Why would someone thank her for watching them die? And why would she ever want to forget them?

Myka dropped the coin and it all came rushing back. It hurt remembering, deep in her gut, and she curled in on herself and felt her body drift to the ground. H.G. was gone. And she'd never forget her, never move on from it, never lose one minute of the time they'd spent being deceptive and bitter and untrusting when they could've been so much more.

"Stop crying." The words were strict, but the voice was loosely gentle. Myka opened her eyes, somehow, saw the boot leather, the legs, the woman crouched over her.

"You're not here," Myka said. She was too numb to say more. It was an Artifact, had to be, something that made you see the dead or think you saw the dead or maybe she was just going crazy.

"There are tissues on the desk," Helena replied primly. "Reach up and dry your eyes. I can't do it for you."

Helena's look was so expectant that Myka gave in. She reached up, felt around, and came back with a box of tissue. A wad of two or three managed to clear her eyes for the moment.

"There. Now don't we look lovely?" Helena asked, rhetorically. She always thought Myka was beautiful.

"Am I crazy?" Myka asked.

"No. Trust me, I'd know."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"The coin." Myka looked at it and Helena moved closer, lying under the desk with her. Myka felt the urge to get up lessening. "As I was handed it, I thought—wouldn't it be wondrous if I could both retake my body and leave myself in the coin, so if you found me, I could tell you where Sykes was headed? And then you touched the coin and, well, here I am, I suppose."

"You're in my head," Myka said. She was already set to believe it. Nothing was more outlandish, more impossible, than watching H.G. die.

"In a manner of speaking. I suppose you could call me Helena's soul—or at least a Xerox copy. But for both our sakes, I think it best if you return me to the coin and then to the other H.G. Wells. We can run together like two samples of mercury."

"H.G.'s gone. You're gone."

Helena blinked. And for a moment, she faltered, looking around through Myka's eyes before she recovered. Myka was grieving. Helena was needed. "Oh. How Dickensian. I don't remember anything that happened after the coin was given to Emily Lake, so to me, this is all rather Ghost of Christmas Future—"

"The Warehouse was going to explode and we were trapped inside. You rewired the forcefield—it took you just ten minutes, I think, less than that—you rewired it to save Pete and Artie and…"

"You," Helena finished. "Of course I'd save you." She smiled, pained. Reaching out, the ghost of her hand touched Myka and felt like nothing. "Was there no way to preserve the two of us and let one of the menfolk die? It'd be the gentlemanly thing to do, on their part."

Now she was getting it. Now it was getting _to_her. Under normal circumstances, her witticisms would be better.

Myka could finally bear to look at Helena. A Helena who wasn't resigned, at peace, ready, but one that was defiant. Vibrant. The one she'd tried to coax out of the other Helena, the sorrowful and wounded Helena. They switched as fast as a coin in mid-flip, but Helena deserved to know who she'd been when it was all over. "You were noble. And brave. In the end, you were so brave."

Helena reached out to Myka, her face fiercely determined, as if she could force her circumstances to make her more than an imagining. As if she could pull herself through life and death to be close enough to Myka to comfort her.

Her hand passed through Myka's heart. Helena pulled it just shy of Myka's body, lying it on the ground like she was offering it to Myka, even when Myka couldn't take it.

"The Warehouse?"

"Destroyed. Along with Mrs. Fredric. Along with you."

"I am here," Helena insisted. She refused to accept these circumstances and she refused to be a torment to Myka instead of a salve. "Perhaps a little the worse for wear, short a few memories and some flesh I was rather fond of, but I am here. In you. All we have to do is find some silly Artifact that will get me a body and…"

"You're always with me." Myka was crying again. She couldn't bring herself to care. "I never lose you, not all the way. There's always something… taunting me. I can't have you, but I can't get rid of you."

"Would you have it any other way?" Helena asked, considering the coin. It hadn't been so bad in there. She hadn't had to see Myka hurting.

"I want to hold you," Myka said. "That's all. The last time I saw you, I never even got to hold you in my arms."

Helena smiled. "I can fix that. Close your eyes."

"I'm a mess, such a wreck…"

"Close your eyes, Myka. Trust in me."

Myka shut her eyes. When Helena next spoke, her voice was much softer, much closer.

"Think back. Remember when we were together. Before I ruined everything. Remember how I used to touch you. I remember how you felt."

Myka could've gasped. She felt a hand running the length of her arm with that feeling that was uniquely Helena—so enticing, yet so safe.

The hands circled to her front, clasped across her, held her tight. She was flush with nostalgia, déjà vu, but Helena's voice cooing in her ear was new. It was full of love that Myka wasn't sure she'd been capable of back then.

"I will stay with you. However I can. As long as I can. And I'll find a way back, for this isn't enough. No… measurement of you is enough. I need all of you. I need you to have all of me."

Myka remembered being happy.


End file.
